Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1887-11-23

nature at the expense of the others. Those
for instance, greatly mistake who, Will
they are faithful in the intellectual an,
moral culture of children, forget the phys
ical. The bright eyes half quenched b,
night study, the cramped chest that come
from the much bending over school desks
the weak side resulting from sedentarines
Of habit, pale cheeks and the gaunt bodies
of multitudes of children, attest that phys
ical development does not always 60 along
with intellectual and moral. How do yor
suppose all those treasures of knowledge
the child gets will look in shattered casket!
Aud how much will you give for the
wealthiest cargo when it is put into a leaky
shipP How can that bright, sharp blade ol
child's attainments be welded withcu,
any haLdle? What are brains worth with
out shoulders to carry them7 What is child
with magnificent mind, but Sn exhausted
body? Better that young man of twenty
one go forth into the world without know
ing A from z if he have health of body and
energy to push his way through the world,
than at twenty-one to enter upon active
life, bis head stuffed with Socrates, and
Herodotus, and Bacon, and La Place, but
no physica force to sustain him in the shock
of earthly conflicts. From this infinite
blunder Of parents how many have come
out in life with a genius that could have
piled Ossa upon Pelion and mounted upon
them to scale the heavens, and have laid
down painting with physical exhaustion be.
fore a mole-hill. They who might have
thrilled senates and marshalled armies and
startled the world with the shock of their
scientific batteries, have passed their lives
in picking up prescriptions for indigestion.
They owned all the thunderbolts of Jupiter,
but could not get out of their rocking
chair to use them. George Washington IN
early life was poor speller, and spelled
hat h-a-double and a ream of paper he
spelled. 'rheam," but he knew enough to
spell out the Independence of this country
from foreign oppression. The knowledge
of the schools is important, but there are
other things quite as important.
just as great is the wrong done when the
mind is cultivated and the heart neglected.
The youth of this day are seldom denied
any scholarly attainments. Our schools
and seminaries are ever growing in ef1cien-
cy, and the students are conducted through
all the realms Ct philosophy, and art, and
language, and mathematics. The most
hereditary obtuseness gives way before the
onslaught of adroit instructors. But there
is a development of infinite Importance
which mathematics and the dead languages
cannot affect. The more mental power the
more capacity for evil unless coupled with
religious restraints. You discover what
terrible power for evil unsauctiied genius
possesses when you see Soaliger with his
scathing denunciatiops assaulting the best
men of his time, and Blount and Spinoza
and Bolingbroke leading their hosts of fol-
lowers into the all-consuming fires of skep.
ticism and lnfdelity. Whether knowledge
is mighty good or an unmitigated evil
depends entirely upon which course it
takes. The river rolling on between round
banks makes all the valley laugh with gold
en- wheat and rank grass, and catching hold
the wheel of mill and factory, whirls it with
great industries. But, breaking away from
restraints and dashing over banks in red
wrath, it washes away harvests from their
-mOoriugs and makes the valleys shrink
with the catastrophe. Fire in the furnaces
heats the house or drives the steamer; but,
uncontrolled, warehouses go down in awful
crash before it, and in a few hours half a
city will lie in black ruin, walls and towers
and churches and monuments. You must
accompany the education of the intellect
rousing up within your child an energy
which will be blasting and terrific. Better
a wicked Ounce than Q wicked philosopher.
The fourth error often committed in the
training of children is the suppression of
childish sportfulness. The most triumph
ant death of any child that ever knew
was that of Scoville Haynes McCollum. A
few days before that, he was at my house
in Syracuse, and he ran like deer and has
halloo made the woods echo. You could
hear him coming block off, so full was he
of romp and laughter and whistle. Don't
put religion on your child as a strait Jacket.
Parents after having for good many years
been jostled about in the rough world often
lose their vivaclty, and are astonished to see
how their children can act so thoughtlessls
of the earnest world all about them. That
is cruel parent who quenches any of the
light in ch,ld's soul. Instead of arrest
ipg its sportfulness, go forth and help him
trundle the hoop, and fly the kite. and
build the snow castle. Those shoulders
are too little to carry burden, that brow
is too young to be wlinkled, those feet are
too sprightly to go along at funeral pace.
God bless their young hearts! Now is the
time for them to be sportful. Let them
romp and sing and laugh, and go with a
rush and hurrah. In this way they gath
er up surplus of energy for future life.
For the child that walks around with q
scowl, dragging his feet as though they
we're weights and sitting down by the hour
in moping and grumbling, prophesy = life
of utter inanition and discomfort. Sooner
hush the robins in the air till they are silent
as bat, aud lecture the frisking lambs on
the hillside until they walk like old sheep,
rather than put exhilarant childhood in the
stocks.
The fifth error in the training of child
hood is the postponment of its moral
culture until too late. Maltitudes of chill
dren because of their precocity have
been urged into depths of study where
they ought not to 60, and their intellects
have been overburdened and oversurained
and battered to pieces against Latin gram
mars and algebras, and coming forth into
practical life they will hardly rise to medi-
ocrity, and there is now stufing and
cramming system Of education in the
schools of our country that is deathful to
the teachers who have TO enforce it, and
destructive to the children who must SUBJ
nit to the process. You find children at
nine and ten years of age with school les
SONS only appropriate for children of fifteen.
If children are kept in school and studying
from to o'clock, no home-study except
music ought to be required of them. Six
hours of study is enough for any child. The
rest of the day ought to be devoted to recre
alton and pure fun. But you cannot begin
too early the moral culture of child or on
too complete scale. You can look back
upon your own life and remember what
mighty impressions were made upon you
at five or six years of age. Oh, that child
does not sit SO silent during your converse
tion to be uninfuenced by it. You say he
does not understand. Although much of
your phraseology is beyond his grasp, he is
gathering up from your talk influences
which will affect his immortal destiny
From tha question ha asks YQu long AFTER